Julian Schnabel at OpernTurm, Frankfurt am Main “The painting in Frankfurt is 46’ tall and 44’ wide. I painted it outside. I’d
been to the building prior to see exactly what size I thought the painting
should be, so I thought those dimensions would be appropriate for that wall.
Many times people will make a design or bozzetto for a large painting and
other painters will fill in the mural. My attitude is that of a surfer taking off
on a big wave, and the opportunity of an arena where marks can interact to
make a painting that is spontaneous and premeditated at the same time.
I selected pieces of canvas that have been stained with oil and pressed
on wooden floorboards in a random way. Seeing in the imprint of the
oil horizontal lines that conjured up for me a sense of water, conspiring
with other fluid watery and white shapes. I often paint by the sea at the
end of Long Island. I think about Moby Dick a lot. In fact there’s a whole
treatise on white that Melville has included in his epic novel. Never-
theless, I have my own attraction and fascination with white. So I covered
this large sandstone colored canvas with white gesso that I applied mys-
elf, and painted a large horizontal diagonal shape through it that was
black and pink with the name Ahab. It looked like a painting to me. It’s ew York 2010 Julian Schnabel, N ew York
irregular, stained, handmade, and anthropomorphic. There’s a topogra- Ahab, Julian Schnabel 2010 phy to it; the ballet of a navigational chart that you can’t find on a map.
I felt like it would humanize the building and make it more like nature,
more like the sea.” “The American vanguard painter took ulian Schnabel was born in New York City in 1951. In 1965 he moved with his family to to the white expanse of the canvas as Melville’s Ishmael Brownsville, Texas. He attended the University of Houston from 19691973, receiving a BFA, and returned to New York to participate in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. took to the sea. On the one hand, a desperate In 1978 Schnabel traveled throughout Europe and in Barcelona was particularly moved by the architecture of Antonio Gaudi, the same year he made his first plate painting, “The Patients and the recognition of moral and intelle ctual exhaustion; Doctors.” His first solo painting exhibition took place at the Mary Boone Gallery, New York City, in on the other,the exhilaration of an February 1979. Schnabel’s work has been exhibited all over the world. His paintings, sculptures and works on adventure over depths in which he might find reflected paper have been the subject of retrospective exhibitions at: The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 1982; The Tate Gallery, London, 1983; The Whitechapel Gallery, London, 1987; The Centre Georges the true image of his identity.” Pompidou, Paris, 1987; The Städtische Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf, 1987; The Whitney Museum of Ame- rican Art, 1987; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, 1987; Museum of Fine Arts, Harold Rosenberg, The American Action Painters, 1952 Houston, 1987; Museum fur Gegenwartskunst, Basel, 1989; Musee d’Art Contemporain, Nimes, 1989; Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich, 1989; Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, 1989; Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, 1989; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 1989; The Museo De Monterrey, Mexico, 1994; The Tamayo Museum, Mexico City, 1994; The Foundation Joan Miro, Barcelona, 1995; Galleria d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, Italy, 1996; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, 2004; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Palacio de Velazquez, Madrid, 2004; and Mostra hen the critic Harold Rosenberg, writing about the work of New York-based artists such d’Oltremare, Napoli, 2004. as Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock, likened the expanse of the canvas to the His work is included in the public collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney ocean, he determined a philosophical direction for painting. This image, of the pain- Museum of American Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Contem- ter plunging into an unknown realm, seeking an image to quantify the infinite dimension of being, porary Art, Los Angeles; The Guggenheim Museums, New York and Bilbao; Centre Georges Pompidou, came to characterize a generation of artists. When Julian Schnabel came of age as a painter in the Paris; Tate Gallery, London; The Metropolitan Museum, Tokyo; The Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid; The mid-1970s the existential terms of art making had shifted. Now painting was understood to be National Gallery, Washington D.C.; The National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; San Francisco Muse- a system, governed by rules, codified by ideas rather than gestures. And yet, against the tide of um of Modern Art, San Francisco; Kunst Museum, Basel; and the Foundation Musee d’Art Moderne, conceptual art, Schnabel declared that painting might still possess the power to narrate the world, Luxemborg.
the self, the identity of the artist. In 1996 he wrote and directed the feature film Basquiat about fellow New York artist Jean Michel Julian Schnabel
In numerous early works the ocean figures as a prominent subject: The Sea (1981) depicts an enor- Basquiat. The film was distributed world wide by Miramax films and was in the official selection of y s mous wave thundering ashore and also includes an actual totem of driftwood placed in front of the oronto the 1996 Venice Film Festival. Schnabel’s second film, Before Night Falls, based on the life of the canvas. More recently Schnabel has painted an on-going series of Navigation Drawings, asserting late exiled Cuban novelist Reinaldo Arenas, won both the Grand Jury Prize and the Colpa Volpi for abstract emblems and forceful gestures upon the surface of found nautical charts and maps. And best actor for Javier Bardem at the Venice Film Festival 2000. Named to over 100 year-end top ten in a new series of large canvases, various images of surfers testing themselves within the vortex lists, Bardem’s portrayal in Before Night Falls earned him both Academy Award and Golden Globe
of breaking waves become emblems of human defiance daunting feats that channel the power A rt ontemporary nominations for best actor. In 2007, Schnabel directed his third film, The Diving Bell and The Butter- of nature. fly. He was awarded “Best Director” at the Cannes Film Festival and the Golden Globes. The Diving Ahab relates to all of these works, and yet it stands apart. In contrast to the intimate scale of the Bell and the Butterfly was nominated for four Oscars, including “Best Director”. maps, Ahab is the largest canvas Schnabel has painted. Its vast surface becomes an analogue to Most recently, Julian Schnabel has exhibited his paintings and sculpture at the Met Life building, biograph the ocean – open, immense, changeable. The curving, dangling white form conjures the essence of New York, New York, December, 2006; Julian Schnabel. Summer Pinturas 19782006, Inter- a whale, a leviathan flashing its terrible grandeur surfaced from the deep. The letters that spell out national Contemporary Culture Centre of San Sebastían, San Sebastían, Spain, JulyOctober, 2007; Ahab determine this reading, summoning Herman Melville’s single-minded captain whose quest for Julian Schnabel. Paintings 19782006, Palazzo Venezia, Rome, Italy, MayJune, 2007; Rotonda self-fulfillment led to self-destruction. In a black, blade-like form that conjures the shape of a har- odern and C della Besana, Milan, Italy, JuneSeptember, 2007; Versions of Chuck and Other Works, Schloss poon, one reads the name Ahab, its letters rimmed with pink, both flesh and blood. One compares d Moo Dr. Davi Derneburg, Derneburg, Germany, June, 2007; Schnabel Asia, Beijing World Art Museum, Beijing, the name Ahab to the white form and contemplates the relationship between the two, a man’s China, SeptemberOctober, 2007; 10 Chancery Lane Gallery, Hong Kong, November, 2007; The fate tied to a whale. Shanghai Zendai Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai, China, JanuaryFebruary, 2008; Gallery Hyundai,
Schnabel’s grandiloquent painting operates such metaphors: placing painting in relation to Melville’s , T of O ntario G allery A rt Seoul, Korea, MarchApril, 2008; Navigation Drawings, Sperone Westwater Gallery, New York, New romanticism while knowingly situating it in a twenty-first century skyscraper. The composition pre- York, JanuaryFebruary, 2008; The Conscious Gaze of Frightened Young Nuns, Museum of Contem-
sents an abstract signifier of the painter’s imagination, presenting pure forms that become entang- , M C urator porary Art, Kiasma, Finland, March, 2008, Christ’s Last Day, Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles, California, led, joined by visual and literary narrative. This is how Schnabel – an artist who stands at the end of FebruaryMarch, 2008; and Julian Schnabel: Untitled (Chinese Paintings), in the Phillips de Pury & the modern tradition in American painting – visualizes what painting can be today. The word Ahab Company Gallery at the Saatchi Gallery, Octobre 9Janary 18 2009; Julian Schnabel Recent pain- brings the white painted form to life, animating it in our imaginations. At this epic scale, painting tings, Art Space at Helutrans, Singapore; Manila March 29April 20, 2009; June 13July 6, Julian assumes the scope of a film screen and one ponders how painting can rival cinema—in its stubborn Schnabel (Untitled Chinese Paintings), Naples July 3September 6, 2009. stillness so many images come to mind. Julian Schnabel lives and works in New York, as well as in Montauk, Long Island.
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